ARRI - Company which you cannot trust

Tomas Riuka

Tomas Riuka

Well-known member
If you ever decide to purchase camera from ARRI ! Be aware of couple of things:
1. They will never be able to tell you when they will deliver your camera.
2. When they say it's ready for shipment, you will be waiting 1.5 weeks to get the tracking number (Because logistics department will not be able to tell it to your sales manager)
3. When you think you camera has been shipped, they will tell you that it might not have shipped probably because it misses some accessories.
4. When you wait 3-4 months for extra items which were supposed to come together with the camera, they inform you that extra items are on back order 4-5 months ON TOP of your 3-4 month waiting time.
Yes, they make the best cameras, but their customer service quality is simply unacceptable and TOTAL DISASTER. Purchasing 6 eur toy from Ebay does not burn your nerves like purchasing 60 000 eur worth camera from GERMAN company.

Someone had to do this, because i'm so mad at being fed promises and empty words...

Tomas
 
If I were you I'd keep posting on their instagram and facebook accounts! Write everything what you wrote here and keep banging on their social media accounts to make a point. I'm sure they'll respond quickly.
 
I have owned 4 ARRI cameras over the course of my career. All of them purchased used. So I have never had to deal with any of this. My philosophy for buying expensive cameras is the same I use for buying high end sports cars. Let someone else purchase them new and take the depreciation loss. Then purchase used at a much better price.
 
You will find that this is the case with many high end products, from fancy cars to designer kitchen appliances. There are backlogs and waiting lists. An Amira or Alexa is not a commodity product and Arri does not have them sitting on the shelf waiting. If you want a commodity product then shop Sony.
 
Mitch Gross said:
You will find that this is the case with many high end products, from fancy cars to designer kitchen appliances. There are backlogs and waiting lists. An Amira or Alexa is not a commodity product and Arri does not have them sitting on the shelf waiting. If you want a commodity product then shop Sony.
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I'm sure Tomas is aware of that, that's not his problem. Problem is poor customer service that gives him false information. How can he plan his shots when he doesn't know when his camera will arrive? He have to reserve a camera at rental shop without really knowing for how long. And when it comes it arrives without some additional items... like WTF?!! Sorry, but this is some cheap Chinese manufacturer way of doing things. We're talking about a camera that is used on thousands to millions of dollars budget sets and one day missed can cost loss of multitude of camera cost itself.
 
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Sorry to hear you've had such a negative experience. I hope it ends well.

When you you are in the thick of it, it will be easy to tak your experience and assume it is the only experience--the rule, not the exception. I'm not sure if this is an experience that lots of people had with Arri. I haven't heard much negative feedback, but then again, I haven't looked.

That said, it sounds like they were not straight with you about expectations from the beginning, and now you are suffering from a case of unmet expectations. It is not a problem to take 5 months to deliver a product if all parties are clear about delivery expectations. However, to not be transparent about extended delivery times is not cool.

Im not gonna acuse them of purposely misleading or not sharing known information. There is no way I can know what happened. But I also know that sometimes things come up that no one can foresee. It is possible that they have run into a snag and weren't expecting it. Are they being apologetic about it? Does it seem like they feel bad? and are they suggesting ways to ammend the situation? And have you found online other customers with similar experiences?
 
Osslund said:
Maybe they don't care to much about the little guy (you) ?
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That's what I would assume. Nothing against Tomas, but the reality is that they know who butters their bread; and they aren't based in Lithuania. Has to be really demoralizing to be dicked around having so much money floating in the ether. Good luck!
 
Everyone is partly right. When you order 1 camera - you are nothing to them. Our dealer through which we buy the camera, gets 3% discount. What is the purpose of the dealer in this case? Arri says - buy 10 cameras , we will give you 2% extra. But there's one catch. We only have 3 alexas in total in our country :D because it's a 3 million people country..

I understand that Arri does not have number of cameras on the shelf, but i would suppose that these sky high prices for accessories they charge, this should not be problem of having a constant stock of all the things you sell. Even car dealers have a couple of cars in the warehouse for you to sell.

The biggest problem as i told is lack of information. 8 days ago they told that 'camera is ready and being prepared for shipping'. Only today we get the tracking number which still empty, so that means they only created the shipment and it will go out maybe today, maybe tomorrow. Does it take 10 days to ship the camera? I don't think so... And at this point, we can't even clearly know what things from the order we will get, it's like a christmas suprise, you will know when you receive it. It's just not the way to do business, especially at those sky high prices.

Naturally, in the rental business, everyday you don't have a camera - it's lost money, so when they say you 'it's ready for shipment' and then you cannot get any answers if it shipped. Or they reply something like ' logistics depatment did not supply the tracking number yet'. This is not a normal procedure that sales agent cannot know what is happening. Finally after 8 days of no normal information, we get an empty tracking number which means package will go out today, or maybe tomorrow. So why tell that all is ready if it is not? or does it take 10 days to pack the camera and ship it? does not make sense.

Simply i hate being told lies instead of just saying 'sorry, it's not ready, we will be able to ship it next week'.

What concerns possible hickups in the supply line - this is normal. But i do see a tendency with Arri already. When we were about to order our Alexa XT 6-7 months ago or so, they said ' no problem, we have a number of XT's, shouldn't be a problem' . We confirmed our order, made the bank wire, in two days we get an email saying 'sorry, all of the camera stock has been bought, you will have to wait 2-3 months'. So what does it say? That if we buy one camera , we are nobody? That's not the way to treat customers, especially knowing that money is already coming in on confirmed order. When we finally got the camera after waiting those months, we had to rerent Arri raw card reader for 2.5 months, because camera was delivered without a raw card reader and all they can say is ' we understand, but we cannot do anything, sorry'. It would be ok if i could take any other card reader, but i can't, so how we're supposed to use camera without a reader? And oh yes ,card reader costs 3000 euros :)

I could continue, but i guess nothing will change. Having the best product on the market gives them possibility to do whatever they want feeling free of giving any quality customer service. Most likely, if you will purchase 15 alexas, 10 sets of master primes, Arri will treat you like a client.
 
Finally, Arri delivered the camera... some items are still a long way to go, but at least the camera is here.

What concerns the dealer/Arri, our dealer is top notch and all i can do is vouch that Hannu Pro Vilnius in all the situations will do 100% of what's in their hands.
 
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